Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:18878 Return-Path: Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 45109 invoked by uid 1010); 14 Sep 2005 12:41:24 -0000 Delivered-To: ezmlm-scan-internals@lists.php.net Delivered-To: ezmlm-internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 45094 invoked from network); 14 Sep 2005 12:41:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lists.php.net) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 14 Sep 2005 12:41:24 -0000 X-Host-Fingerprint: 82.94.239.5 jdi.jdi-ict.nl Linux 2.5 (sometimes 2.4) (4) Received: from ([82.94.239.5:36756] helo=jdi.jdi-ict.nl) by pb1.pair.com (ecelerity 2.0 beta r(6323M)) with SMTP id 28/63-41173-27A18234 for ; Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:41:22 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jdi.jdi-ict.nl (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j8ECf04M018234; Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:41:00 +0200 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jdi.jdi-ict.nl (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j8ECetS9018222; Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:40:56 +0200 Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:40:52 -0400 (EDT) X-X-Sender: derick@localhost To: Colin Tucker cc: internals@lists.php.net In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at jdi-ict.nl Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Reference handling change and PHP 4.4.0 From: derick@php.net (Derick Rethans) On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Colin Tucker wrote: > Hello all, > > I know this issue has most likely been discussed to death here so I apologise > in advance for starting a new thread about it. I just need to get my head > around the reasoning for introducing this change to PHP4 (4.4 branch). I can > understand making the change to PHP5, but can someone bring me up to speed as > to why it was done to PHP4? As I'm sure you're aware, it breaks heaps and > heaps of existing code out there. It already broke heaps of code - and this problems *was* affecting application with hard to find crashes. So yes, it is worth it. > We found this out the hard way yesterday when our server administrator > upgraded our production server to PHP 4.4.0 (even though the Debian package > description said it was a PHP 4.3.x release). We ended up with hundreds of > errors and many, many vhosts stopped working correctly due to "variable > references should be returned by reference" problems, both in my code and in > third-party code, such as PHPBB instances. Uhm, they're only notices - they shouldn't show up at the website in production, now should they? > And now I read that this will not be "fixed" in future PHP4 releases due to > breaking backwards compatibility? I just don't understand... a change that > breaks backwards compatibility in a large portion of the existing PHP4 code > base will not be fixed because it breaks backwards compatibility? It's doing > my head in, please can someone explain? PHP 4 is not going to change the behavior anymore. Derick -- Derick Rethans http://derickrethans.nl | http://ez.no | http://xdebug.org